Yo Science Is Dope

Evergreen.

Pseudoscience and COVID-19 — we’ve had enough already The scientific community must take up cudgels in the battle against bunk.

Note: Many of us don’t realize, understandably, that the word “antisocial” is not meant to describe shy or introverted people. It’s the opposite of “pro-social”. It indicates behaviors that are destructive to society.


Practicing kindness as a child may also pay off later in life. In a 20-year study, psychologists tracked kids from kindergarten until they turned 25, and revealed the surprising benefits of “pro-social behavior”—that is, being cooperative, helpful, empathetic, and just plain nice. The results: Kids who showed these behaviors early on were more likely to stay in school, avoid criminal activity, steer clear of drug or alcohol abuse, and have better mental health as grown-ups.

Nowadays, as kids deal with the ongoing stressors of the pandemic, it’s especially important for children to practice kindness as a way to stay connected with others.

“We do not function well in isolation, and it’s probably more difficult for kids because they don’t have all the social and emotional skills to get through really stressful times like this," Jones says. “The science tells us that kindness doesn’t live in a bubble. It functions when we’re connected to each other.”

The latest health kick for kids: kindness Why acts of kindness during a pandemic mean so much—for the receiver and the giver

More from the growing pool of evidence for a “post-COVID-19” “In general, the extent of EEG abnormalities correlated with the clinical status of patients and pre-existing neurological diseases. We included only COVID-19 positive patients in our analysis- however, when those who tested negative were reported, it was found that a higher proportion of positive patients had epileptiform abnormalities (40.9 %) compared to those who were negative (16.7 %). EEG abnormalities may be correlated with the severity of COVID-19 infection.”

“Previous coronavirus epidemics are also known to cause neurological changes including seizures. The earliest available report of neurological complication of SARS−COV infection was a patient with respiratory failure and seizures, although EEG was not performed. Not many reports of EEG findings are available - a normal EEG in a patient with generalized tonic clinic seizures due to SARS-CoV-1 virus and diffuse slowing in a patient with MERS have been reported. EEG reports are considerably more in COVID-19 compared to these previous coronavirus infections.”

Systematic review of EEG findings in 617 patients diagnosed with COVID-19 The COVID-19 pandemic continues to test the resilience of health systems and the limits of our understanding of viral infections of the nervous system. There has been interest in the EEG findings in COVID-19 related viral encephalitis/encephalopathy.

Happy Halloween 🎃

Via: Twitter/ACflurane

In lieu of sporadically sharing science news stories any longer, I’ve decided I will defect to team murder hornet. 🐝

“State Agriculture Department crews donned futuristic protective equipment on Saturday (Oct. 24, 2020) to destroy the first "murder hornet" nest ever found in the United States. The nest, in Blaine, Washington, was home to 100 to 200 Giant Asian hornets, an invasive species with a dangerous sting that reportedly feels like being pierced with a hot nail.”

Photos: Murder hornets will haunt your nightmares Here's a look at one of the most diabolical and invasive insects: the murder hornet, or the Asian giant hornet.

RIP James Randi - In these fact-famished times, we could use a few more real ones like him.

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One of Mr. Randi’s most celebrated investigations was that of Mr. Popoff. A California preacher who professed to heal the sick, Mr. Popoff had a wide following on television and radio. He drew large crowds at revival meetings around the country, at which he called upon audience members by name and correctly identified their afflictions. In 1986, The Los Angeles Times reported, his average gross income was $550,000 a month.

That year, Mr. Randi planted an accomplice with a radio scanner and a tape recorder at one of Mr. Popoff’s public meetings. The scanner picked up Mr. Popoff’s wife relaying information previously gleaned about audience members into a small receiver hidden in his ear.

“Popoff says God tells him these things,” Mr. Randi told U.S. News & World Report in 2002. “Maybe he does. But I didn’t realize God used a frequency of 39.17 megahertz and had a voice exactly like Elizabeth Popoff’s.”

James Randi, Magician Who Debunked Paranormal Claims, Dies at 92 Known professionally as the Amazing Randi, he dedicated his life to exposing seers who did not see, healers who did not heal and many others.

As science-communicators have been saying for months, the reports of COVID-19 cases and deaths are generally underestimates, or a measure of “at least”.

States report their data differently. Some only report confirmed cases. Some report confirmed and probable. Some states get their numbers from death certificates, while others count deaths among diagnosed cases of COVID-19. Taking all of this into consideration, COVID-19 deaths are likely to be underestimated in the aggregate rather than overestimated.

Excess Deaths From Pandemic Higher Than Official Numbers How many people have died in the US so far from the COVID-19 pandemic? It depends on how you count the numbers. The official count of US COVID-19 deaths is 214,000. This number is often reported as "at least" this amount, because this is a compilation of all deaths where COVID-19 was officially list

Herd immunity via mass infection really misses the point.

None of the four treatments in the Solidarity trial, which enrolled more than 11,000 patients in 400 hospitals around the globe, increased survival—not even the much-touted antiviral drug remdesivir.

A silver lining is the global approach that was taken to research these potential treatments. Conducting trials in many places simultaneously means more patients can be included, leading to faster results but also to more robust data. “You’re including many different types of subgroups and populations in different parts of the world”, says Nahid Bhadelia, a physician at Boston Medical Center.

Another advantage: The 1300 participating doctors worldwide will have a sense of ownership of the results, Henao Restrepo says. “When they see the results in The New England Journal of Medicine, [they will] say, ‘I’ve contributed to that and I understand why that drug works or doesn’t work. I know, I trust it,’” she says. “That is different from some Northern Hemisphere group publishing, and they say: ‘Somewhere in a rich country they did a trial and now we all have to believe the results.’”

Remdesivir and interferon fall flat in WHO’s megastudy of COVID-19 treatments Solidarity fails to find mortality benefits in four treatments—but the global trial itself wins praise

Do you know someone who would see this and think it’s true? Tell them you love them. At least they’re not QAnon.

Viruses that originate in bats could be quite deadly like the SARS, MERS, Ebola, Covid-19, Nipah/Hendra... Bats have been shown to host immune systems that are perpetually primed to mount defenses against viruses, viral infections then lead to a swift response that walls the virus out of cells.

In simpler words, it protects the bats from getting infected with high viral loads but it also encourages these viruses to reproduce more quickly, increasing their risk of jumping to another species where the viruses will quickly overwhelm their new hosts, leading to high fatality rates. Humans are not spared. This makes bats a unique reservoir of rapidly reproducing and highly transmissible viruses.

Disrupting bat habitat appears to stress the animals and makes them shed even more virus in their saliva, urine and f***s that can infect other animals.

Natural habitat destruction, extreme pressure and stress imposed on wild animals, wildlife trafficking, live animals markets, atrocious farms animals living conditions... have consequences and we have just started to pay the price.

To know more:

https://news.berkeley.edu/2020/02/10/coronavirus-outbreak-raises-question-why-are-bat-viruses-so-deadly/

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/mar/18/tip-of-the-iceberg-is-our-destruction-of-nature-responsible-for-covid-19-aoe

(via Extinction Rebellion / Comic Science)

A new study finds that 80% of untrained stray dogs successfully followed pointing directions from people to a specific location. The results suggest that dogs can understand and respond to complex gestures without any training, meaning that dogs may have an innate connection to human behaviors.

New dog, old tricks? Stray dogs can understand human cues Pet dogs are highly receptive to commands from their owners. But is this due to their training or do dogs have an innate ability to understand human signals? A new study finds that 80% of untrained stray dogs successfully followed pointing directions from people to a specific location. The results s...